Incomplete knowledge: ethnography and the crisis of context in studies of media, science and technology

This article examines strands of an intellectual history in Media and Cultu ral Studies and Science and Technology Studies in both of which researchers were prompted to take up ethnography. Three historical phases of this proc ess are identified. The move between phases was the result of particular di splacements and contestations of perspective in the research procedures wit hin each discipline. Thus concerns about appropriate contextualization led to the eventual embrace of anthropology al ethnographic methods. The articl e traces the subsequent emergence of a 'crisis of context' in the deploymen t of ethnography within these disciplines. The analysis of these historical changes is informed by a particular depiction of Euro-American knowledge c onventions. The article suggests that the limits currently perceived for et hnography are a specific instance of the more general limits now recognized for these knowledge conventions.